Obama Violates Constitution

By using recess appointments President Obama got around the Senate and appointed three people to the National Labor Relations Board. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit says that the President violated the Constitution when he did that. From the article: “…GOP lawmakers gaveled in for a few minutes every three days just to prevent Obama from making recess appointments. The White House argued that the pro forma sessions — some lasting less than a minute — were a sham.” Read the article: news.yahoo.com

Not entirely, but in the case of the NLRB appointees SCOTUS is likely to uphold this ruling, since the Senate was in pro-forma session at the time. A recess appointment requires the Senate to actually be in recess, which it wasn’t:

Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution states that neither house of Congress may adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other house. The House of Representatives did not consent to a Senate recess of more than three days at the end of last year, and so the Senate, consistent with the requirements of the Constitution, must have some sort of session every few days.

The president and anyone else may object that the Senate is conducting “pro forma” sessions, but that does not render them constitutionally meaningless, as some have argued. In fact, the Senate did pass a bill during a supposedly “pro forma” session on Dec. 23, a matter the White House took notice of since the president signed the bill into law. The president cannot pick and choose when he deems a Senate session to be “real.”

It does not matter one whit that most members of Congress are out of town and allow business to be conducted by their agents under unanimous consent procedures, because ending a session of Congress requires the passage of a formal resolution, which never occurred and could not have occurred without the consent of the House.

I’m quite sure that this rulings effect will stand up to Supreme Court review and that the NLRB’s work in 2012 is basically going to have to be discarded.

To me what’s neither constitutional nor effective government is giving the minority party effective veto power over every Executive branch appointment. That’s just plain f’ing wrong, and the GOP knows it.